


This Little Light of Mine

by actonbell



Category: Carrie - Stephen King
Genre: All Souls, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Death, Extra Treat, Female Friendship, Gen, Ghosts?, Haunting, Near Death Experiences, Post-Canon, Telekinesis, Telepathy, Theory of Mind, Trick or Treat 2018, in the fine tradition of horror flicks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-11 07:39:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16471496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/actonbell/pseuds/actonbell
Summary: (you tricked me you all tricked me)(carrie i don't even know what happened)(you tricked me that happened trick trick trick o dirty trick)(carrie don't don't dont)(see the dirty tricks see my whole life one long dirty trick)(look carrie look inside me)--Carrie,Stephen King





	This Little Light of Mine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Edo no Hana (Edonohana)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edonohana/gifts).



> There is a very small Shirley Jackson Easter egg, in honour of King's great respect for her as a writer.

Two weeks, six days, three hours and ten minutes after Sue Snell had collapsed in Henry Drain's field, after the last echoes of her howling scream had brought the rescue workers from the Cavalier parking lot, where they were vainly trying to put out the wreckage of the burning Chevrolet in which Chris Hargensen and Billy Nolan had died, she was, finally, completely alone. Her parents were discussing with the director of Westover Mercy Hospital's long-term care unit the unsayable, the unthinkable, for any parent: _What if she doesn't wake up?_ or, worse -- how could it be worse? -- _What if she does wake up, and she's...._ The Director, a brutally tired, sagging, graying middle-aged man, had decades of experience of saying the unsayable to parents, husbands, wives, children, and other relatives, and he said it well. Sue's parents would be listening to him, however unwilling, for a while. The head nurse had gone home early with a "wicked awful" case of the flu, which would be diagnosed in three days as actually mild pneumonia. The ward nurse, who took impersonally tender care of her charges before they were transferred to nursing homes or the LTCU, or the basement morgue, had just wiped Sue's lips and the inside of her mouth with a fresh lemon-scented swab, taken and recorded her pulse, blood pressure, respiratory rate and sounds, and temperature, checked her IV lines, and smoothed the sheets. What had been waiting now saw its chance. She would be unguarded for at least an hour. That would be more than enough time.

The one window in Sue's hospital room, a long narrow thing that seemed to let in more gloom bouncing back up from the enclosed cement courtyard three stories down than actual light from the sky, had been left ajar at six or so: it was a lovely mid-June morning, sunny with a few wisps of cloud and occasional cool breezes. Above the ceiling of Sue's room, which was on the top floor, there was a very faint pitter-patter, a trickling crackling sound, as if someone had idly picked up a handful of the gravel that covered the hospital's flat roof and tossed it down again. The window hinge creaked slyly, only a little. If what was gaining entrance while Sue breathed deeply, evenly, had been tangible, it might have been a small diverted current of wind from outside, or a bit of overheard melody from where the janitor was humming to himself as he picked up cigarette butts and bits of trash in the courtyard below, or motes of dust caught in one of the beams of light slanting through the steadily widening gap between the window and the frame. But it was more diffuse than the air Sue breathed in and then slowly exhaled. (The Director was explaining Babinski sign to Sue's parents; the head nurse had just nearly fainted in her own kitchen after putting the kettle on for her self-prescribed scotch tea; the ward nurse was reading a folded-over paperback of _The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side_ she had been given by a friend who worked in the hospital nursery.) The window flew wide open, hinges groaning, and stopped short of banging against the wall as if someone had grabbed it. 

Consciousness as a general state is a patchy affair, not necessarily tied to attention or awareness: consider the exasperating daydreamer, or the silently focused reader, or the sleeper sunk in dreams. Consciousness may never "arise" at a precisely determined state in a baby, or a comatose patient, perhaps because it may always, in a sense, already be there. Something not listening, not even hearing, but receiving, which has the same relation to analytical thought as Beethoven's _Große Fuge_ has to "Mary Had a Little Lamb," or a warm coal to a raging fire. Something deep in Sue Snell was solidly asleep, but not gone, still registering, and the intruder searched for it, sinking down through layers of crude bodily response and cellular reaction until it finally stopped, sensing not "the bottom" by the shore but the edge before something like the continental slope, and beyond it a great abyssal plain with no air, no light, no need for such things as those. The unseen guest kicked frantically back from the edge (which was not what happened in "reality," a strange matter of microscopic electro-chemical pulses and charged particles, but both Sue and her visitor were far beyond those terms) and hung on, like a diver gasping for air, and then -- to put what happened in understandable, everyday words -- "said"

_(sue)_

There were no words, no emotions, no images, no thought. There was no representation, let alone re-representation, only experience, something which must _be,_ to somehow be aware, to feel, to know, however dimly, at whatever level, even in sleep, below dreams -- below even knowledge of its awareness. The invader tried again, and again -- 

_(sue, suesuesuesuesue, su-ue, SUE, SUE, SUE_ SUE -- SUE SNELL, SU-SAN SNELL)

If there had been one spark, entering, somehow, through the window, now there were two: not near to each other, really, but seeming to be near the way two stars look near to each other in the sky, to us on the ground. But they were, somehow, contained in the same place, the same illusion of a limited night sky. Sue did not wake up; the analytical, self-aware, meta-conscious part of her mind was nowhere near the surface. One spark seemed to grow brighter, take on sharpness, for the other, and in that black almost uninterrupted darkness she "called" back

_(who, who are you --  
(who's there)_

(Sue lay on her smoothed sheets, her skin cool and dry, her chest evenly rising and falling, machines recording her steady heart rate without fail, no sign of any trouble or indeed change within. The hospital floor was not silent because hospitals never are -- nurses chattered, visitors wept, faucets ran and pipes banged, lights clicked on and off, a distant television gabbled -- but where the two of them were remained silent, private, undisturbed.)

_(it's me sue it's me)_

_(who are you)_

_(it's me_

_carrie)_

Very, very dimly, the part of Sue that was somehow communicating with the part of Carrie was troubled. She was not just aware _of_ Carrie but aware that this meant something, that she should be aware of _carrie_ who was -- but who? 

If Carrie had, when alive, thought of what could be considered her best self, she probably would have chosen the image of herself sitting at the table with Tommy, at the prom, resplendent in her red dress and feeling the silk wrap whisper-shiver against her skin, seen as beautiful and acceptable by all, one of them, accepted. Or perhaps some hidden corner of her mind might have revealed the little girl with silky dark blonde hair, pink cheeks and bright brown eyes shining in her sweet face: before the stones, before the ring of bruises around her neck, long before the blood and the power. Tommy would have recognized those dark eyes in the round face, seeming to cast shadows beneath them, and Miss Desjardin might have seen the comprehension and compassion Carrie had mirrored back to her, before the devil had brought Hell to Chamberlain _(if only, if only....)_ But Carrie and Sue had not known each other that way; they had shared that 'awful totality of perfect knowledge,' as Sue wrote long afterwards, past human understanding. 

What Sue felt in response to her question was like an explosion of emotion resolving itself into images, experiences, memories, a mosaic of identity -- _things flying in the house,_ the huge mahogany table halfway out the window, the stones "whistling like bombs," Mama's grip, Mama's knives, blood flowing unstoppably, a rain of it, a hot shameful drenching jet -- the blue-lit cave of terror where all hope died -- all of it going up in flames while a small presence cowered under a stone, desperately hiding -- from Mama, God, angels, their flaming swords held in mighty arms, Samson bringing the great carved pillars down upon his own head, laughing demons, everyone. The overhead light in Sue's room, left on twenty-four hours a day for the ease of nurses doing their checks, flickered and buzzed, and the window jolted in its frame, as if someone inside was desperate to get out. Sue drew back as far as she could. But the rock would not hide Carrie, or her, either; there was no escape from how they knew each other. _Now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known_ had always been presented as a promised reward, but here with Carrie it was a terrible thing. She tried again to pull away, terrified of being trapped again with Carrie as she had been when Carrie died, and the violent invisible struggle made tiny changes deep in her body, her mind.

 _(YOU KILLED THEM!)_ she screamed at the bloody freak she could never run from. _(YOU KILLED THEM ALL Tina Rachel Helen Donna Mary Jessica Sue Jeanne Nancy_ Tommy -- )

 _(nonono i didn't, didn't kill tommy)_ Carrie said desperately in the cadences of a crying child. _(never tommy. i would never hurt him. i wouldn't)_ and she hadn't; Sue saw the falling steel buckets, the terrible clang as one fractured his skull, the mercifully swift almost painless death that followed his lapse into blackness, hours before the flood and the fire and the great final inferno. He was innocent of what had happened. Sue saw the memory held as something precious Carrie had clawed out of a terrible pile of shame and hate solid as a rock, one last present he had given her, like the tea roses and the party favour gondola: _he didn't know, didn't hate me for what happened, he loved me_ i know --

If she had been awake, Sue would have protested, been angry and even a little shocked, but those reactions could not reach down into these depths, here. 

_(he did he loved you too they did too they all loved you)_

_(for a whole five minutes)_ Carrie said with rueful humour, and no bitterness at all. Sue shared the feeling with her, with what would have been a wry smile if they had been alive together. But then abruptly Carrie's mood changed, like a wind rising in a storm. 

_(SUE you have to go you have to get out now you have to leave, you got to get -- )_

Sue tried resisting again but it was hopeless. _(leave where go where, what, what are you doing, i don't understand don't want stop it no -- )_

She could almost feel, in a tactile way, Carrie changing her approach, considering another tactic. _(let's go, let's go to kelly's, and get malteds, or dime root beers? in those big cold mugs? so big your whole hand doesn't fit around them....)_ Carrie's longing was so powerful Sue could see the resurrected store more clearly than she ever had alive, as if each item were illuminated from within: the glinting bottles of beer and wine, the spinner racks that squeaked reproachfully and wouldn't spin, the stacked cigarette cartons of odd and old brands like Eve and Chesterfield and Lark, a pack or two of Black Cats on the counter, the real marble soda fountain counter gleaming like an iceberg and not a scratch on it. It was too beautiful and her eyes began to tear, looking at it, knowing it was all ruined and gone, while Carrie went on and on _(we can save the change and roll our nickels for a bus ticket and get out sue you have to get out now --)_

_(i don't want to go! there's nowhere to go here anymore, there's nothing left, it's all gone -- )_

_( -- we'll go anywhere, we can go to venice, for real, but you have to get out go back wake up WAKE UP SUE WAKE UP --)_

_(you killed them)_ Sue thought in absolute desperation, _(you burnt it all up you killed them all. you did. it was you)_

_(it was me, i did it, i meant to, i'm sorry sue sorrier than you can know)_ Carrie's voice, Sue's awareness of what would be Carrie's voice, was shrinking, getting thinner and thinner, losing words and sense. She sounded exhausted. _(wake up, wake up....wake up)_

Sue felt what she could only describe as a giant _FLEX_ of power behind her, as if Carrie had planted her foot square in the middle of Sue's back and shoved with all her might, only it was Carrie's self, not her leg and stomach muscles, the whole force of whatever was left of her driving Sue wherever she wanted her to go. The only thing Sue felt remotely close to it was years later when she was swimming off Seabrook Beach and caught in a riptide which had carried her swiftly far out like a shark grabbing its prey. It had taken everything she had not to exhaust herself battering against it, and instead swim across its narrow width parallel to shore until she had escaped. Here there was no current, no shore, but something sucking her down, pulling her under until all at once it reversed and spat her back up and she gasped so violently a cramp ripped across her stomach. 

She drew her knees up under the blanket -- not her blanket, she was not in her bed, where was she? -- her nose burned and her throat was on fire, so dry it felt filled with dust. Her ears were ringing. The window had cracked and, as she watched helplessly, a huge jagged piece of it fell majestically slowly out of the frame, like ice melting off a roof, and crashed on the floor out of her sight. Two, then three, nurses were at the door, and one of them hissed "Go get her mother!" and the other two took off like trained hounds. The nurse slowly approached Sue, no sudden movements, unsmiling but kind.

"Well, hello there," she said in a low pleasant tone. "It's very good to see you awake, Sue. Your parents will be here in a few minutes, they're on another floor. Don't try to talk just yet. Does your throat hurt?" Sue nodded, her eyes filling. "I'm sorry we can't get you anything to drink yet, but how do ice chips sound?" Ice chips sounded sweeter than heaven. Noise and colour bloomed behind her: more nurses, a couple of doctors, but not her parents, and not -- Sue opened her mouth and an actual wheeze came out; she sounded like a broken accordion. "K'h -- arry?" she tried, and caused a coughing fit that felt like swallowing razor blades. She gave up and tried to whisper as loudly as she could, "Where's Carrie?" 

Everyone stopped dead around her, the way they would in a movie or play; Sue could almost hear the dramatic chord that would have been on the soundtrack. Someone said "Is that who -- " and was cut off with "Yeah _that_ Carrie," as if there would never be another one. Sue heard a clatter nearby and turned her head, the starched pillowcase stiff _(there's a pillow, why did I think I didn't have a pillow?)_ and saw ice chips sliding out of the bowl, off the tray in the lax grip of a very young-looking nurse, who stared at Sue. God knew what she had seen, on prom night. She heard the ice cracking on the floor, to match the glass shards on the other side of the room nobody else had seen yet. "Just set it down, there, that's all right," said the very calm nurse, who sounded even steadier in the small upset around her. "You don't need to worry about her, Sue," she went on. "She's gone, and she won't hurt you, or anyone else, ever again."

Sue stared at her, unable to take in what she was saying, remembering Carrie writhing in pain and blood on the oily asphalt, gasoline shining and stinking around them, the hot crackling breath of the fire surrounding them, loud and greedy as an animal's. "She _died,"_ she said, and her voice gave out in the middle of even whispering.

"Yes. She's dead." The nurse nodded. "It's all right now."

Sue's head sank back on the pillow as her neck muscles went slack, unable to hold it up by herself anymore, and underneath all the hustle and bustle of her temperature and blood pressure and "vital signs" being recorded (again) and being asked if she knew her name (Susan Snell) and where she was (a hospital?) and what year it was (1979....is it June?) the part of her mind that had still been linked with Carrie's -- or least had seemed to be -- roared at top volume, _(YOU TRICKED ME YOU TRICKED ME YOU FUCKING BITCH)_ but there was nobody there to hear. She tried to keep answering the questions they were still asking her, but after a while she got the impression they had been saying her name repeatedly _(Sue? Sue?)_. "I'm sorry," she said, "I'm just....feeling tired...."

One doctor nodded and began ushering out the others, and most of the nurses. "Don't be afraid to go to sleep," he told her heartily, "you'll wake up again just fine, and you need to recover your strength. We'll let your parents in now, just for a little bit, and see if they have any questions. And someone tell maintenance about that window -- " Sue heard one nurse ask another doctor, under the happy-talk, "And how many of them got out?"

"Twelve. Plus her." 

_Twelve. Plus her._ Sue bit down as hard as she could on the inside of her cheek to keep from bursting into hysterical laughter, which would only frighten and confuse the people trying to help her, and also felt like it would slash her throat to ribbons. She wondered who else had survived Carrie's night of wrath, and why. Did she know any of them already? Were they Carrie's --not disciples -- witnesses? Should they get together to form the world's most freaked-out therapy group? She wondered if any of them knew, that it was truly her fault; if she hadn't made Tommy ask Carrie, Chris would never have had the idea to raise her up to savagely knock her down further than she'd ever been, and Carrie and Tommy wouldn't be dead. Even Chris wouldn't be dead. However many of the seniors wouldn't be dead. She had probably missed their funerals. She had missed graduation. Had there been anyone left to rent caps and gowns and pick up their diplomas? Where had they buried Carrie? With her mother?

Her parents were not demonstrative people, but as the doctor finally led them in with a few nurses as rear guard, Sue saw relief so raw and terrible in her mother's face that she had to look away, unable to bear her shining eyes and mouth gaping like a wound. Sue's father watched them and then abruptly turned his back, his shoulders shaking; the doctor patted him awkwardly on the shoulder. Sue managed to put her arms around her mother, as she buried her face in Sue's neck, and Sue inhaled her hairspray, her perfume, the sweet rich mother-scent rising off her skin. She closed her eyes. "Oh my girl," her mother whispered. "My Suzie-Q. Susie creamcheese." Those were childhood nicknames Sue hadn't heard in years and years -- she shuddered. _Little Miss Sorority Sue, Cupcake Cutie of the whole damned cupcake brigade, the get-along girl who goes along,_ was she back as easy as that, ever country-clubbable? I can't conform to peer pressure, she thought, now that I don't have any peers anymore, and the terrible laughter nearly escaped again. She coughed. "I'm okay, Mom," she rasped. "Okay. I even know who the President is." 

Sue's mother clung to her a moment more, then weakly laughed and sat up, clutching Sue's hand. Her father was sitting in a chair next to Sue's bed, but doctor, as befit Doctor's importance, remained standing so he could loom over them. Sue mostly tuned out during his explanation of what her brain had been doing for the past two weeks; she was tired and fretful, and muddled, and had her own reasons for doubting medical science at the moment, anyway. Her mother reached out and took hold of her father's hand, too, and thus fortified, asked Doctor the unthinkable: "But if -- that White girl -- didn't attack Sue and if she didn't have any serious injuries, how did this happen? How do we know it won't happen _again?"_ "Nell...." her husband tried, but she shook her head.

Doctor became slightly clipped in response to Eleanor Snell's demands; Sue watched his his professional demeanour cool by about ten degrees, like a window lightly frosting over. He fumfuh'd on about medicine being a science and not witchcraft and as far as he knew nobody yet had managed to predict the future, but Our Girl was already responding well on the Glasgow scale and they would certainly run more tests and scans in the coming weeks while she underwent physical therapy in the hospital's rehabilitation program (Sue wondered if she could try to escape through the broken window). As for the original injury itself -- there had been a slight contusion on her forehead, and the police officer she had spoken with on the night of....had confirmed she indeed had been in a minor skidding accident in Mrs. Snell's car when the fuel tank at the high school exploded, and she possibly fell when the gas pumps also....well. (The blood had drained from her mother's face, making her blusher and lipstick and eyeshadow look like a little girl had drawn with crayon on her doll. Sue squeezed her hand.) Entirely possible some slight injury to the brain from the steering wheel, exacerbated by a further fall, expected normal recovery, no reason why not think perfectly normal college life....

Sue stared at him. She had felt slightly sorry for him to begin with, having been on the receiving end of her mother's interrogations more than a few times, and her head was not only muzzy but possibly starting to ache and her muscles ached oddly, too, as though she were getting the flu, and her joints felt stiff. But enough was enough. There was no longer, for her, any chance of anything _perfectly normal_ and the sooner she tried to make that clear, the better. "Mom," she said, and felt the combined weight of the adult's attentions swing back and lock onto her, a physical force. She still sounded like what one of her aunts called "those old heavy breathers." "I....was with her," she croaked. "Mom, I was with her when she died -- I saw her die -- I _felt_ her. I felt her die." Her mother immediately enveloped her again; over her shoulder, she saw her father bow his head, his hands to his face, and heard one muffled sob. "She, she killed her mother, Carrie did," she said into her mother's ear. "She told me. She went home, and her mother stabbed her, and Carrie killed her, they both _died,_ Mom, they died." It wasn't enough, nothing would ever be enough to express the sheer horror of being tied to Carrie while her candle-flame of consciousness hurtling through a tunnel of blackness, tumbling down an endless well, whatever fancy language you wanted to dress it up in. Sue knew the shadow would never pass from her own life, not ever; since she had woken up she had had difficulty not remembering Carrie's death every few minutes. She knew it would fade, eventually, not disappear. She would bear the scar.

"Shhh, sweetie, hush," her mother hummed in her ear, as she had when Sue was a child. "Susie-Q, little miss Sue, it's all right. You poor child. Oh, my baby. You were all babies, all of you. Just babies. That poor girl, at Margaret's mercy. Poor child."

  


Sue was never sure when she slipped into sleep after that; in her recollection Doctor began to loom very large indeed, growing so tall it seemed his head nearly brushed the ceiling, and her parents grew smaller and smaller and shorter and shorter until they were like children standing before a principal. She had seen this kind of Alice-in-Wonderland trippy distortion when she was falling asleep before, and wondered dimly if she _had_ suffered some brain injury and that would explain all of it, a similar trick of the brain like a trick of the light....In the same way, she was not entirely surprised to see Carrie, if maybe Carrie really had been some kind of trick played by her subconscious and blood-swollen grey matter. But she felt Carrie's personality, like the touch of her hand, an imprint that, in waking life, would have meant recognition of a familiar face; and she felt Carrie register herself _(it's me sue snell)_ the same way. She yanked herself back, tried to shut Carrie herself out: that beaten-animal wariness, that tense waiting to see what you would do, that quiet pensive dignity that went so deep she herself was unaware of it. 

"Go away," she told dream-Carrie resentfully, refusing to complete that staggeringly intimate mental connection. "You're not here. I'm not here. This isn't real. It's just a dream."

Carrie looked thoughtful. "Dreams matter in the Bible," she said. "Even to the pharaoh -- "

"It's a TRICK!" Sue shouted at her. "It's nothing, you're nothing, it's just a couple of -- nerve cells -- flapping around and fizzing and -- " She mortified herself by bursting into tears. Carrie said nothing, judged nothing, only waited, with her odd silent passivity that was like a kind of resistance, unyielding as rock underneath the surface.

"What I did...." Carrie made a strange circling gesture with her hand, clearly embarrassed at referring to the destruction she had rained down on her tormentors, the town she had obliterated. "That was real. People would say it couldn't happen, before then. They'll probably say it _didn't_ happen, if you give them long enough. Make something else up, that sounds good to them. But....it all happened, Sue. _All_ of it happened. It wasn't a trick. It was real."

"You're not _here," _Sue said.__

Carrie raised one shoulder, an odd little half-shrug. Even her physical gestures were shy and constrained, but -- even if only for a few hours -- she had bloomed. Sue saw her, then, not the bloody monster wreaking revenge, and not the sweet little girl, but who that girl might have grown up to be, given half a chance. Any chance. Maybe what she'd given to Carrie was good after all, not something tragic and wrong, because she had tried to open the door, even if just a little, wedge it open so Carrie could slip through and fight for what she could. And it had almost worked -- almost, almost.

 _(we shouldn't have thought we could get away with it)_ Carrie said.

 _(we almost did)_ Sue protested.

 _(horseshoes and hand grenades)_ Carrie said-thought-shrugged with a little funny sigh, and who would have thought it? that Carrie White was _funny,_ could laugh, without being the butt of every joke, the eternal walking punchline. "It's not fair," Sue said. "It's so not fucking fair, it's _not -- fucking -- fair -- "_

_(you have to wake up, sue, wake up, little susie -- )_

"Not this again," Sue said. 

_(i made things happen. just by wishing --)_ Carrie waited, but Sue knew to outwait her now, curious what Carrie would honestly say. 

_(i wish we'd been friends, sue, i do, i wish it a lot)_

_(me too)_

And this is the girl they keep calling a monster, Sue thought.

  


Sue realized she'd woken up because her mother had briefly left the room; she could see the back of her mother's linen yellow blouse, and her hair, which meant she was talking to one of the nurses at the station right across the hall. Now that Sue was awake, the constant rattling of trays and shrilling of telephones and general chatter made it difficult for her to stay asleep, when she did rest. Her mother had brought in a radio to help mask the outside noise, but someone had moved it too far away on the bedside table. Her muscles were still wobbly and her grip weak; even before physical therapy began, she was supposed to start squeezing rubber balls in each hand to build up her strength. She reached over for the on switch, being overly careful not to knock the radio to the floor, but was unable to flip it. _Damn!_ she thought and sank back on her pillow, shooting a deathly glare at the -- 

"WAKE UP, LITTLE SU-U-ZIE," the Everly Brothers sang in their clear, ringing voices, "WAKE UP --" It was on full blast. Sue knew she hadn't let it that way. She knew other people would say the song was a coincidence, too.

Sue's mother whirled around and someone yelled down the hall, annoyed, "Will you _please_ turn that DOWN?" and Sue called "Sorry, sorry -- " and the radio shut itself off --

_(no, no that was me i did it)_

I did it, Sue realized. It was me. Without touching it. Both times. 

She looked up to meet her mother's gaze, and saw that her eyes were wide, and she was trying to smile; that familiar, godawful sweet slightly desperate smile -- and Sue did her best to smile back, feeling that same expression stiff on her own face, like a painted mask.

**Author's Note:**

> This story was inspired by your general prompt of "One of my favorite tropes ever is the dangerous trip into an unknown place surrounded by mystery, from which few or none have ever returned" and the Carrie-specific "Or bring in some mythic overtones, maybe with someone going on a journey to the underworld." 
> 
> I am honestly a little unsure if it is a treat or a trick. I hope you enjoy it!


End file.
